Archive 24 October 2002 – MY OPINION IS RIGHT!

NOTE: Since writing this, a few things have changed. I now have a regular column in The Canberra Times - but if you try to look it up on the Web, it won't work. It's only in the print edition. (Sorry about that.)


I had an Opinion piece published this week. Not for the first time, nor the first newspaper. It's one of the great things about being a writer: you get to thrust your opinions on innocent readers, even (if you so choose) on subjects about which you know nothing. (I try to avoid doing that.) It's like being a barber or a taxi driver, times 100,000. And then, if you're lucky, you get your own regular column.

I don't have one of those. I read what other regular columnists have to say - and frequently, I don't understand why they get to have their own column. Despite all my opinions, I don't expect I'll be offered a column for a while, if ever. I don't work on staff anywhere, so I'd probably cost too much. Besides, I don't fit snugly into the "left" or the "right". Nobody would know whether or not to agree with me! I'm totally disgusted by the Government's immigration program, but I still believe in God. I can't stand the current spate of warmongers, but I also think that some feminists have gone too far. I'm a vegetarian environmentalist who thinks that marijuana should remain illegal. I suppose I'm more Left-leaning, but I think the whole thing's a joke. It seems that, like everything else, political ideologies are being simplified for the average guy. And politics, like everything else, just isn't that simple.